


Wounds No Time Will Heal

by kadharonon



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 12:12:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17981108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadharonon/pseuds/kadharonon
Summary: Me, back when there was that wish AU that showed as two episodes with a cliffhanger and we weren’t sure how Regina and Emma were going to get back: Gee, wouldn’t it be horrible if they had to cast the dark curse and use either Henry or Robin?Everyone else in the OUaT fandom at the time: Why. Why are you like this. Please stop.





	Wounds No Time Will Heal

The spell is all set again, after the disastrous first attempt. Regina stares into the cauldron, going over the mixture again in her head, checking the words on the scroll, doing everything she can to avoid the sight of the young man frozen in the corner, looking so grown up and so small at once in his too-large suit of armor.

“I’ll do it,” Emma says, laying a gentle hand on Regina’s arm.

“Emma…” Even that one word cracks on Regina’s lips, breaking apart the way her own heart is. She swallows and tries again. “Emma, you can’t. Don’t darken your heart like that.”

“Says the woman whose heart is pitch-black,” responds Emma, injecting a bit of gallows humor into the situation. “You couldn’t even stop him when he was trying to stab you. And anyway…” Emma trails off, not able to voice the reason they’re attempting this a second time, and Regina can only stare back at Emma, eyes full of pain, remembering Robin’s corpse, crumpled to the floor yet again, this time because she’d been the one to crush his heart.

Emma breaks the silence with a brisk “Well, let’s do this,” and in one swift movement plucks the heart from Henry’s chest.

It’s enough.

Back in Storybrooke they go straight to Henry, crushing him close between them, their fervor uncomfortable to a teenaged boy even as he realizes that something must have gone terribly wrong for them to need him so. They never tell him why, and he knows better than to ask.

For the rest of their lives, Regina Mills and Emma Swan each carry a wound that no amount of time is ever able to heal. It comes to Regina’s eyes when she looks at her son. It’s felt in Emma’s arms when she hugs her son too close.

And it never goes away.


End file.
